Huqul al-Nakhl

Late Imam Khomeini:

“Be like Chamran.”

Martyrs are too great to be in need of any tribute, yet what makes such occasion a must, is to make acquainted the new generations with the thoughts and beliefs of great men in history like Shahid Mostafa Chamran.

Chamran was born in 1932 in Tehran. At 15, he began his activities with Islamic associations, participating in classes of commentary on the Quran by Late Ayatollah Taleghani and those of logic and philosophy by Martyr Professor Motahhari.

Enjoying a government scholarship for talented students, he went to the United States for a period of 14 years and earned his master’s degree from the University of Texas. He then went on to get his Ph.D. in electronics and plasma physics with excellent grades from the University of California at Berkeley. He entered research on satellites and powerful radars with Bell Laboratories.

He had complete mastery over English and Arabic and also knew French and German.

His most important political activities abroad were organizing and training guerrilla and revolutionary forces in Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

Chamran participated in guerrilla activities in liberation wars against Israel and the Phalanges. For eight years he assumed responsibility for managing the Technical School of Jabal-Amel in southern Lebanon.

Full article: www.insight-info.com

At the time of the victory of the Islamic Revolution under the leadership of Imam Khomeini, Chamran returned to Iran. Initially, he became commander of the government division of the Revolutionary Guards. He was deputy prime minister for revolutionary affairs and was later appointed minister of defense.

Which country is the rogue nation? Iraq? Iran? Or the United States? Syndicated columnist Charley Reese asks this question in a recently published article.

Reese notes that it is the US that routinely commits “acts of aggression around the globe.”

The US government has no qualms about dropping bombs on civilians whether they be in Serbia, the Middle East, or Africa. It is all in a good cause – our cause.

This slaughtering of foreigners doesn’t seem to bother the American public. Americans take it for granted that Americans are superior and that American purposes, whatever they be, take precedence over the rights of other people to life and to a political existence independent of American hegemony.

The Bush regime has come up with a preemption doctrine that justifies attacking a country in order to prevent the country from possibly becoming a future threat to the US. “Threat” is broadly defined. It appears to mean the ability to withstand the imposition of US hegemony. This insane doctrine justifies attacking China and Russia, a direction in which the Republican presidential candidate John McCain seems to lean.

The callousness of Americans toward the lives of other peoples is stunning. How many Christian churches ask God’s forgiveness for having been rushed into an error that has killed, maimed, and displaced a quarter of the Iraqi population?

Full article: www.insight-info.com

Israel, without the United States, would probably not exist. The country came perilously close to extinction during the October 1973 war when Egypt, trained and backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the Suez Canal and the Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge American military transport planes came to the rescue. They began landing every half-hour to refit the battered Israeli army, which had lost most of its heavy armor. By the time the war as over, the United States had given Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid.

The intervention, which enraged the Arab world, triggered the OPEC oil embargo that for a time wreaked havoc on Western economies. This was perhaps the most dramatic example of the sustained life-support system the United States has provided to the Jewish state. Israel was born at midnight May 14, 1948. The U.S. Recognized the new state 11 minutes later. The two countries have been locked in a deadly embrace ever since.

Washington, at the beginning of the relationship, was able to be a moderating influence. An incensed President Eisenhower demanded and got Israel’s withdrawal after the Israelis occupied Gaza in 1956. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli warplanes bombed the USS Liberty. The ship, flying the U.S. Flag and stationed 15 miles off the Israeli coast, was intercepting tactical and strategic communications from both sides. The Israeli strikes killed 34 U.S. Sailors and wounded 171. The deliberate attack froze, for a while, Washington’s enthusiasm for Israel. But ruptures like this one proved to be only bumps, soon smoothed out by an increasingly sophisticated and well-financed Israel lobby that set out to merge Israel and American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Israel has reaped tremendous rewards from this alliance. It has been given more than $140 billion in U.S. Direct economic and military assistance. It receives about $3 billion in direct assistance annually, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. Foreign aid budget. Although most American foreign aid packages stipulate that related military purchases have to be made in the United States, Israel is allowed to use about 25 percent of the money to subsidize its own growing and profitable defense industry. It is exempt, unlike other nations, from accounting for how it spends the aid money. And funds are routinely siphoned off to build new Jewish settlements, bolster the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories and construct the security barrier, which costs an estimated $1 million a mile.

The barrier weaves its way through the West Bank, creating isolated pockets of impoverished Palestinians in ringed ghettos. By the time the barrier is finished it will probably in effect seize up to 40 percent of Palestinian land. This is the largest land grab by Israel since the 1967 war. And although the United States officially opposes settlement expansion and the barrier, it also funds them.

Full article: www.insight-info.com

Under the cover of the ” war against terror “, the United States and the European Union have granted unlimited powers to secret services and police. Emergency measures which were introduced on a provisional basis in 2001, outside any judiciary control, have become permanent. Since September 2001, at least 80,000 people, mainly Muslim, would have been kidnapped, kept in secret prisons, and tortured by CIA and FBI agents. Hundreds of others have been put on the UN « black list ». That’s what happened to the businessman Youssef Nada, 77 years old, an Italian citizen of Egyptian origin, accused by U.S. President, G.W Bush of financing Al-Qaeda. Two judiciary investigations resulted in a non-suit, but Mr. Nada didn’t get his name deleted from the UN « black list » (*). His assets remain frozen; he is barred from travelling to or transiting in any country. He can’t go outside the tiny enclave of Campione - an Italian enclave inside Swiss territory - where Silvia Cattori went to meet him.

I will be available in January 2009, am willing to relocate.

RESUME

GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20520

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:

Law Enforcement:
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under  the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver’s license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been ‘lost’ and is not available.

Military:
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam while campaigning for a fellow Louisiana
Republican.

College:
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader. My good grades got me into Harvard Business School , where I learned much of what you will find below under Work Experience.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:

I ran for U.S. Congress and lost.

I began my career in the oil business in Midland , Texas , in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn’t find any oil in Texas . The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money.

With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas .

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS :

I changed Texas pollution laws to favor utility and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union . During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America .

I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.

I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.

With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida , and my father’s appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President of the United States , after losing by over 500,000 votes.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:

I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.

I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.

I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury, driving the US dollar down to toilet paper status.

I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.

I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market. In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and after a short respite, that trend continues today.

I’m proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My ‘poorest millionaire, ‘ Condoleezza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.

I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.

My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. history, Enron.

My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.

I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history. I
presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.

I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.

I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States Government.

I’ve broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.

I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.

I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.

I refused to allow inspector’s access to U.S. ‘prisoners of war’ detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.

I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US election)

I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.

I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August of 2001, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history

I garnered the most sympathy ever for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.

I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind

I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. Citizens and the world community.

I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in wartime.

In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.

I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.

I am supporting development of a nuclear ‘Tactical Bunker Buster,’ a WMD.

I have so far failed to fulfil my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES:

All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father’s library, sealed and unavailable for public view.

All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review. I specified that my sealed documents will not be available for 50 years.

College-age women often come to Professor Gail Dines in tears after she lectures about how popular culture has become poisoned with a hyper sexuality that demands women offer themselves to any man who asks.

The young women feel isolated and alone because they refuse to degrade themselves in exchange for male companionship, said the professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston and founder of the Stop Porn Culture movement. It’s time to end a corporate-driven effort to promote “slut culture” in the United States, Professor Dines said.

The oppression and misuse of women is not new to America, or American culture, but many see a crisis of misogynistic and racist elements that are damaging the soul of the nation and hurting children, women and men in the process.

Black women, in particular, have historically been portrayed as sexual objects to justify slavery, rape, sexual abuse and denial of respect and opportunity, advocates and scholars say. Negative messages solely concerned with “hotness” and sex appeal are also being pushed on adolescents and younger girls in a dangerous way, advocates warn.

Adolescence is the time when girls form an identity based on messages from society, said Professor Dines. If the messages focus on physical attributes and access to men, the young girls are not growing in a healthy way, she said. Professor Dines will be featured at “The Sexualization of Childhood” symposium, June 13-14, at Point Park University in Pittsburgh.

The American Psychological Association, in a study released last year, reported that girls and young women suffered intellectual, psychological and physical problems as a result of messages that push sexualization, which is defined as a “person’s value coming only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics; a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy; a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making, and/or; sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.”

Researchers looked at a wide form of media—television, music videos, music lyrics, magazines, movies, video games and the internet as well as advertising campaigns and found messages in advertising, merchandising and products aimed at girls.

According to the research, the sexualization of girls and young women:

• undermined feelings of confidence and comfort with their own bodies, leading to emotional and self-image problems, such as shame and anxiety;
• was linked with three of the most common mental health problems diagnosed in girls and women—eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression or depressed mood;
• had negative consequences on girls’ ability to develop a healthy sexual self-image.

www.finalcall.com

June 6 is a day with a special characteristic. It’s a day that marked the beginning of a new era in the Arab-Israeli conflict and paved the way for strong resistance movements to rise and eventually make a change.

On this day, twenty-six years ago, Israeli occupation forces launched a massive military incursion into Lebanon in an operation dubbed “Peace for Galilee.” At first glance, the Israeli aggression seemed to be aimed at south Lebanon, but then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon pushed all the way to the capital Beirut.
“Peace for Galilee” for the Israelis is the “Israeli Invasion” for the Lebanese.  It began on 6 June, less than two months after Israel transformed its defeat in Sinai into a political victory in Camp David. Then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin got the impression that all Arab countries would follow Egypt and sign so-called peace deals with Israel.
 
Jordan gave its word to Israel that it would sign such treaty once Lebanon signs a similar one. The Kingdom did not want to get involved in any agreement that would put it at odds with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) that had its leadership headquarters in Beirut.
Back then, Lebanon meant the fertile land for Palestinian resistance movements; thus dealing a blow to the PLO in Lebanon would crush the resistance once and for all and pave the way for signing a peace deal with Lebanon and then with Arab states. In doing this, Israel would extract the acknowledgment of Arabs in the so-called “state of Israel” and open the way for political and economic expansion in the Middle East region.
 
Menachem Begin found that the only way to achieve this “glory” for Israel was to invade Lebanon to crush the PLO, but under what pretext?
 
On July 24, 1981, US President Ronald Reagan’s special envoy Philip Habib arrived in Beirut with a controversial mission. Habib managed to broker a shaky nine-months ceasefire between Yasser Arafat and Israel. When the ceasefire took effect, Tel Aviv was like a beehive preparing politically and logistically for their “big time invasion.”  
Back in Beirut, Israeli and pro-Israeli bodies worked persistently on straining the internal front. Clashes between Lebanese and Palestinian forces expanded throughout south Lebanon. Both forces got weak and their chances of closing ranks to confront any Israeli military operation were zero.  
 
The element of direct military resistance was removed at a time some Arab regimes were at the Arab Summit in Fass preparing a formula to penetrate the Arab impregnability.
So everything was ready for the invasion. Israel just needed the pretext and it was not hard to find. On June 3, 1982, Israel’s ambassador in London Shlomo Argov escaped an assassination attempt.
The Israeli intelligence told Begin that the PLO was not involved in the attack, however he withheld this information from his cabinet. Rafael Eitan, who was then the Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, responded to the aforementioned information in his famous saying “Abu Nidal, abu shmidal. We need to end PLO!”

Full article: http://www.insight-info.com/articles/item.aspx?i=1156

A law allowing women to wear the headscarf at university was overturned by Turkey’s constitutional court yesterday, a decision that threatens the ruling party with closure for allegedly promoting Islam.

The powerful 11-member court, the stronghold of secularists, voted 9-2 to reverse changes made this year relaxing restrictions on the wearing of the headscarf.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister – whose headscarf-wearing daughters study in the US, where no such restriction exists – had maintained that prohibiting the scarf in higher education was an infringement of women’s rights. But the court said that the changes required to allow the scarf to be worn infringed the secularist principles of the constitution.

In February Turkish MPs voted to amend the constitution to lift curbs on the headscarf in universities by 411 votes to 103. President Abdullah Gül, who helped to found the ruling AK party, approved this two weeks later. Yesterday’s decision has been heralded as a precursor to another case being heard in the same court regarding Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK). The headscarf vote in parliament is a mainstay of the case against AK, which a top prosecutor wants banned for pursuing an alleged Islamist agenda since it came to office in 2002. He also wants to exclude 71 party members, including Mr Erdogan, from politics for five years. A ruling is expected soon.

The Constitutional Court verdict issued Thursday says amendments that were passed by Parliament in February ran counter to constitutional provisions which say Turkey is a secular republic and that this principle is unalterable, a court statement said.

Secularists claim the move would undermine the secular state.

The headscarf reform plays a central role in a separate court case that seeks to shut down the AK Party for anti-secular activities, and ban 71 members, including the prime minister and the president, from belonging to a political party for five years.

Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek was reported by broadcaster CNN Turk as saying he would comment on the matter once he had read the court’s ruling.

“We must see the justification for the decision,” Cicek, who is also government spokesman, was reported as saying.

Lifting the headscarf ban was one of the most significant moves on religious issues in predominantly Muslim but secular Turkey since a military coup in 1980 that led to a crackdown on individual rights.

Press TV

The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, recently called the United States “a hegemonic power that has lost the high moral ground.” Our politicians have ruined not only our economy but also our image and integrity. President George W. Bush didn’t practice what he preached of a “humble foreign policy” but applied instead the attitude of “might is right.”

Our country, once a beacon of hope and freedom for the world, has squandered our prosperity to create conflicts and instigate civil wars among other nations by funding one group against another. This is a moral tragedy.

The successful presidential election in Lebanon indicates the failure of the Bush foreign policy. The people of the region are searching for reconciliation. The United States should get on the right side of the struggle and be part of the triumph of peace. The president said he gave up golfing “in solidarity” with the families of soldiers in Iraq. I hope the president resumes his golfing soon. A more constructive display of solidarity would be to stop these wars, fix the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan and don’t start yet another war in the Persian Gulf.

There is no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons. United Nations atomic watchdog chief, Mohamed El-Baradei, accused the Bush administration of adding “fuel to the fire” with bellicose rhetoric. The national intelligence estimate in November 2007 confirmed that Iran’s nuclear program has no military aspect — it is not pursuing nuclear weapons. Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran, just like any other country, has the right to produce peaceful nuclear technology.

full article by Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi

Iran’s chief prosecutor said bombers who caused a deadly blast at a mosque in Shiraz had confessed of links to Israel and the United States, the ISNA student news agency reported on
Friday.

“Those responsible for the attack against the Shiraz mosque have confessed to having links to worldwide oppression, in particular the United States and Israel,” Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi was quoted by the agency as saying.

They also admitted carrying out “one or two minor operations,” the agency said, without providing further details except to say the group launched military operations a year ago.

The April 12 blast in the southern city left 13 people dead and more than 200 wounded. Authorities subsequently announced the arrest of 15 people.

Earlier Friday, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami said people had also plotted attacks in the holy city of Qom, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Tehran, and at a book fair held in the capital.

Iran has already accused Britain and the United States of training and financing those behind the bombing. In the past it has also blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and
Afghanistan for launching attacks on border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations.
The strike in Shiraz was the first in decades in Iran’s Persian heartland. The normally placid city is not in a border zone, nor is it home to any significant ethnic or religious minority population.